Tim is Deputy Director, International Science at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). His role is to champion Defra Group’s science internationally and to provide strategic coordination and direction to Defra’s use of science and innovation to achieve positive international outcomes.

Prior to this, for six years he was Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for International Development (DFID), providing science advice to Ministers and overseeing portfolios of climate, energy, water, agriculture and health research and innovation to progress international development goals. He has also been Director for Research and Innovation at the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), the UK's main agency for funding and managing research in the environmental sciences, and International Director at UK Research & Innovation (UKRI).

He has more than 30 years’ experience of sustainable agriculture, food and climate change research, with specialist skills in forecasting climate risks to food production. He has been a Specialist Adviser to the House of Lords, and served as a member of Council for the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) and of the UK Government’s Leadership Councils for Agri-Tech and for Space. He is currently a Visiting Professor at the University of Reading and an Honorary Professor at the University of Bristol.

Matthew joined Depaul International as Group CEO in September 2021.  Depaul International oversees the Depaul family of charities – made up internationally of seven subsidiary charities, the Institute of Global Homelessness and the Famvin Homeless Alliance. The Group is locally governed and locally run and committed to ending homelessness for some of the most marginalised and improving the lives of the people affected by it.  Depaul subsidiary charities are currently based in seven countries across Europe and North America, (Croatia, France, Ireland, Slovakia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom and the United States of America) providing a range of urgent accommodation and services for people in great need.

Prior to Depaul International, Matthew worked within the international humanitarian sector for over 35 years undertaking numerous senior country leadership positions in many of the world’s most complex humanitarian crises. He spent twenty years as CAFOD’s (Caritas) Humanitarian Director leading their humanitarian responses in Asia, Africa, Middle East, Latin/Central America and the Pacific.

He has been a strong advocate and practitioner for building national and regional humanitarian capacity,  advocating for the international community to better support community and locally based organisations, and leading greater interfaith work. Throughout Matthew’s international career he has been an outspoken and strong advocate in promoting greater accountability to those people affected by crises and ensuring their protection.  Through this work on accountability, he helped lead the development of the international humanitarian standard, Sphere and the Core Humanitarian Standard (CHS), and remains the External Independent Advisor and Chair to the CHS Alliance. He is passionate about the environment and integrating an environmental perspective into humanitarian action and ensuring a systems-based approach.

Matthew has worked as Country Director in DRC for Concern Worldwide, as a technical advisor with the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) in Bosnia, Somalia, South Sudan and Mozambique, and in Romania as Director of the Ungureni Trust. Matthew started off his international career working as a water engineering with VSO in The Gambia.

More recently, Matthew was founding member and chair the global START Network, which provides humanitarian innovation, local and community level humanitarian funding.  He was the former Chair of Caritas Internationalis Global Humanitarian Committee and Caritas Europa, and is currently an Advisory Board member of Bristol University Cabot Institute. Matthew holds an MSc in International Relations and Management.

In June 2023, Matthew was awarded an OBE in HM The King’s first Birthday Honours list for services to the global humanitarian sector.

His role is to improve the use of science by policy makers, by bringing science with societal implications to the attention of key policy actors across all sectors. Rupert previously led the Government Office for Science (GO-Science) which supports the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor. Rupert’s previous roles were Head of Automotive policy in the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), where he also led work on business risks and contingency planning.   Prior to this he was BIS Deputy Chief Scientific Adviser, head of Climate Adaptation policy (Defra), leading the UK’s first cross-economy climate risk assessment, he led a Defra agency rationalisation, and in 2007 set up the Prime Minister’s ‘Business Council for Britain’.  In 2004, whilst in a previous spell in the Office of Science & Technology (OST), a predecessor of GO-Science, working to the then Government Chief Scientific Advisor, Sir David King, Rupert initiated the ‘Horizon Scanning Centre’. Before joining Government in 2002, Rupert worked on new technologies in aquaculture start-ups in SE Asia, South Africa, and Europe.

As the Director of Science at the Met Office, Simon is a member of the Executive Board and leads the Science directorate, with accountability for the Met Office’s world-leading research in Foundation, Weather and Climate Science and for developing underpinning capability for scientific products and services. This includes the Unified Model seamless modelling system for weather and climate science applications.

Simon sponsors the Met Office Next Generation Modelling Systems programme which will reformulate and redesign the Met Office’s complete weather and climate research and operational/production systems, enabling exploitation of future generations of supercomputers.

Amy Robinson studied Philosophy at the University of East Anglia and has lived and worked in Bristol since 2000.  Following four years at Aardman Animations, she has spent the majority of her career working in sustainability focused businesses. She began her environmental career at Eunomia Research and Consulting and went on the become Sustainability Manager at Bordeaux Quay, an internationally recognised ’eco-restaurant’, before her role as Network Director for Low Carbon South West CIC. During that time Amy worked as the Low Carbon Sector Specialist for Invest Bristol and Bath, working to build the low carbon sector in the West of England. Amy was also a founder of the Go Green sustainable business programme which formed part of Bristol’s programme as European Green Capital 2015 and engaged with 1,000 businesses in its first six months, helping them to embed resilience and sustainability into their business models.

Amy has held a range of voluntary board positions including Environmental iNet SW, Sustainability South West, The Design Programme, The Architecture Centre and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership.

Her current role is Partnerships Manager at the ethical bank, Triodos, where she works to promote the importance of ethical investment and the positive use of money to achieve social and environmental goals.

Dickie Whitaker has 30 years' experience in the Re(In)surance business and for the last 20 years has specialised in risk and innvoation, linking academia, government and finance. He co-founded The Lighthill Risk Network, Oasis Palm Tree Ltd., The Oasis Hub and is chief executive of Oasis Loss Modelling Framework Ltd. He provides advisory roles to: UK's Satellite Applications Advisory Board, Expert Group for the Global Risk Assessment Framework (GRAF) and the UN Internationl Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR).